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Serbo-Croatian phonology
Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language with four national standards. This article deals exclusively with the Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian dialect, the basis for the standards of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. Serbo-Croatian has 30 phonemes, 25 consonants and 5 vowels, and a pitch accent. All lexemes are spelled in accented form in both scripts (Gaj's Latin and Vuk's Cyrillic), as well as in both accents where these differ (Ijekavian and Ekavian, with Ijekavian bracketed). Translations are given as tooltips, and can be seen by hovering the cursor over a marked entry. Consonants The consonant system of Serbo-Croatian has 25 phonemes. One peculiarity is a presence of both post-alveolar and palatal affricates, but a lack of corresponding palatal fricatives. * is labiodental before , as in tramvaj , whereas is velar before , as in stanka . * are dental, whereas are alveolar. The first two become laminal denti-alveolar , before dental consonants. * is palato-alveolar . , cited in * is a phonetic fricative, although it has less frication than . However, it does not interact with unvoiced consonants in clusters as a fricative would, and so is considered to be phonologically a sonorant (approximant). * are voiced , , }} before voiced consonants. * Glottal stop may be inserted between vowels across word boundary, as in i onda . * has more allophones: ** are retracted to , }} before . ** is retracted to when it is initial in a consonant cluster, as in hmelj . ** is labiovelar before , as in vuk . can be syllabic, short or long, and carry rising or falling tone, e.g. "blood", "heart", "deer", "compassion". It is typically realized by inserting a preceding or (more rarely) succeeding non-phonemic vocalic glide. is generally velarized ("dark", ɫ). Diachronically, it was fully vocalized into /o/ in coda positions, as in past participle }}. In some dialects, notably Torlakian, that process did not take place, and can be syllabic as well. However, in the standard language, vocalic /l/ appears only in loanwords, as in the name for the Czech river Vltava for instance, or debakl, bicikl. Very rarely other sonorants are syllabic, such as in the surname Štarklj and in njutn "newton". In more detailed phonetic studies, the post-alveolars ( ) are described as apical ( ) or retroflex ( ). In most spoken Croatian idioms, as well as in some Bosnian, there is a complete or partial merger between post-alveolar ( ) and palatal affricates ( ). Alveolo-palatal fricatives are marginal phonemes, usually realized as . However, the emerging Montenegrin standard has proposed two additional letters, Latin }}, }} and Cyrillic }}, }}, for the phonemic sequences , which may be realized phonetically as . Voicing contrasts are neutralized in consonant clusters, so that all obstruents are either voiced or voiceless depending on the voicing of the final consonant, though this process of voicing assimilation may be blocked by syllable boundaries. Vowels only occurs allophonically.]] The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is symmetrically composed of five monophthongal vowels: a'', ''e, i'', ''o, u''. Although phonemic, the difference between long and short vowels is not represented in standard orthography. Unstressed vowels are shorter than the stressed ones by 30% (in case of short vowels) and 50% (in case of long vowels). The long Ijekavian reflex of Proto-Slavic ''jat is of disputed status. The prescriptive grammar published by the foremost Croatian normative body—the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, describes it as a diphthong, "Prednji je i složeni samoglasnik, dvoglasnik (diftong) ie. Pri njegovu su izgovoru govorni organi najprije u položaju sličnom kao pri izgovoru glasa i'', a onda postupno prelaze u položaj za izgovor glasa ''e. U hrvatskom književnom jeziku dvoglasnik je ie ravan diftong." but this norm has been heavily criticized by phoneticians as having no foundation in the spoken language, the alleged diphthong being called a "phantom phoneme". "Iako se odraz dugoga jata u kojem ijekavskom govoru možda i može opisati kao dvoglas, on tu u standardu sasma sigurno nije. Taj tobožnji dvoglas treba maknuti iz priručnikâ standardnoga jezika jer nema nikakve koristi od uvođenja fantomskih fonema bez ikakve podloge u standardnojezičnoj stvarnosti." Thus the reflex of long jat, which is spelled as a trigraph in standard Croatian, Bosnian and Ijekavian Serbian, represents the sequence . Stressed vowels carry one of the two basic tones, rising and falling. Pitch accent Shtokavian dialects allow two tones on stressed syllables, and have distinctive vowel length, and so distinguish four combinations of these, called pitch accent: short falling }}, short rising }}, long falling }}, and long rising }}. Most speakers from Serbia and Croatia do not distinguish between short rising and short falling tones. They also pronounce most unstressed long vowels as short, with some exceptions, such as genitive plural endings. The accent is relatively free because it can be on any syllable except the last one. Accent alternations are very frequent in inflectional paradigms, both by quality and placement in the word (the so-called "mobile paradigms", which were present in Proto-Indo-European itself and became much more widespread in Proto-Balto-Slavic). Different inflected forms of the same lexeme can exhibit all four accents: (nominative sg.), (genitive sg.), (nominative pl.), (genitive pl.). Although distinctions of pitch only occur on stressed syllables, unstressed vowels maintain a length distinction. Pretonic syllables are always short, but posttonic syllables may be either short or long. These are traditionally counted as two additional accents. In the standard language, the six accents are realized as follows: Examples are short falling as in ; long falling as in ; short rising as in ; long rising as in . Unstressed long syllables can occur only after the accented syllable, as in or . There can be more than one post-accent length in a word, notably in genitive plural of nouns: → . Realization of the accents varies by region. Restrictions on the distribution of the accent depend, beside the position of the syllable, also on its quality, as not every kind of accent can be manifested in every syllable. # Falling tone generally occurs in monosyllabic words or the first syllable of a word ( , ; , ; , [[Karlovac| ]]). The only exception to this rule are the interjections, i.e. words uttered in the state of excitement (e.g. , ) # Rising tone generally occurs in every syllable of a word except the ultimate and never in monosyllabics ( , ; , ; , ; , ). Thus, monosyllabics generally have falling tone, whilst polysyllabics generally have falling or rising tone on the first syllable, and rising in all the other syllables but the last one. The tonal opposition rising ~ falling is hence generally only possible in the first accented syllable of polysyllabic words, whereas the opposition by lengths, long ~ short, is possible even in the non-accented syllable as well as in the post-accented syllable (but not in the pre-accented position). Proclitics (clitics that latch on to a following word), on the other hand, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following mono- or disyllabic word. This stolen accent is always short, and may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic. This phenomenon (accent shift to proclitic) is most frequent in the spoken idioms of Bosnia, in Serbian it is more limited (normally with the negation proclitic ''ne), and is almost absent from Croatian Neo-Shtokavian idioms. Such a shift is less frequent for short rising accents than for the falling one (as seen in the example → ) Morphophonemic alternations Serbo-Croatian exhibits a number of morphophonological alternations. Some of them are inherited from Proto-Slavic and are shared with other Slavic languages, and some of them are exclusive to Serbo-Croatian, representing later innovation. Fleeting a The so-called "fleeting a" (Serbo-Croatian: ), or "movable a", refers to the phenomenon of short /a/ making apparently random appearance and loss in certain inflected forms of nouns. This is a result of different types of reflexes Common Slavic ''jers */ъ/ and */ь/, which in Štokavian and Čakavian dialects merged to one schwa-like sound, which was lost in a weak position and vocalized to */a/ in a strong position, giving rise to what is apparently unpredictable alternation. In most of the cases, this has led to such /a/ appearing in word forms ending in consonant clusters, but not in forms with vowel ending. The "fleeting a" is most common in the following cases: * in nominative singular, accusative singular for inanimate nouns, and genitive plural for certain type of masculine nouns: *: (nom. sg.) – (gen. sg.) – (gen. pl.) *: (nom. sg.) – (gen. sg.) – (gen. pl.) *: (nom. sg.) – (gen. sg.) – (gen. pl.) * in genitive plural forms of feminine nouns ending in a consonent cluster: *: – , – , – * in nominative singular indefinite masculine forms of adjectives and pronouns: *: – , – , – Palatalization The reflex of the Slavic first palatalization was retained in Serbo-Croatian as an alternation of : → : → : → before in inflection, and before and some other segments in word formation. This alternation is prominently featured in several characteristic cases: * in vocative singular of masculine nouns, where it is triggered by the ending -e: *: → ''jȕnāče, → ''vrȃže, → It is, however, not caused by the same ending in accusative plural: ,This is a stylistically marked form: the usual plural form of is with -''ov''- interfix: ; accusative plural: , but the infix is inhibiting the environment conditioning the palatalization, so the short plural form was provided. * in the present stem of certain verbs before the endings in : *:* – present stem ; , but without palatalization before the 3rd person plural ending ''-u'' *:* – present stem ; , but without palatalization before the 3rd person plural ending ''-u'' *:* – present stem ; , but , without the palatalization before the archaic 1st person singular ending ''-u'' * in aorist formation of some verbs: *:* – (1st person singular aorist), as opposed to (2nd/3rd person singular aorist) *:* – (1st person singular aorist), as opposed to (2nd/3rd person singular aorist) * in derivation of certain classes of nouns and verbs: *:* → , → , → *:* → , → * before the "fleeting a", and before the endings and several others: *:* → , → , → , → * a few words exhibit palatalization in which and palatalize before vowels and , yielding and . Such and result from earlier and by the Slavic third palatalization (which may actually have occurred prior to one or both of the other palatalization processes) . Such palatals have often been leveled out in various derived forms. For example: *:* – – , – – , – – , – , – – *:* – , – There are some exceptions to the process of palatalization. The conditions are: * before the suffix *:* → , → , → * before the suffix in adjectives derived from hypocoristic nouns: *:* → , → , → Doublets exist with adjectives derived with suffix from trisyllabic proper names: * Sibilantization The output of the second and the third Slavic palatalization is in the Serbo-Croatian grammar tradition known as "sibilantization" (sibilarizácija/сибилариза́ција). It results in the following alternations: : /k/ → /ts/ : /g/ → /z/ : /x/ → /s/ before /i/. This alternation is prominently featured in several characteristic cases: * in the imperative forms of verbs with stem ending in /k/, /g/ and one verb in /x/: *:* – present stem ; (2nd person singular imperative) *:* – present stem ; (2nd person singular imperative) *:* – present stem ; (2nd person singular imperative) * in masculine nominative plurals with the ending : *: → , → , → * in dative and locative singular of a-stem nouns (prevalently feminine): *: → , → , → * in dative, locative and instrumental of masculine o-stems: *: → , → * in the formation of imperfective verbs to perfective verbs *: – , – (but first-person singular present: ) In two cases there is an exception to sibilantization: * in nominative singular of masculine nouns: ** in monosyllabic borrowings: **: → Bȁski, → brȍnhi, ȅrg → ȅrgi}} ** in toponyms in plural form, usually from a region where Kajkavian dialect is spoken: **: , }} ** some surnames that are not identical to some general noun of the standard language **: ** with nouns having 'fleeting a' in the ending **: * in dative and locative case of feminine and masculine a-stems ** in hypocorisms **: → báki, → séki, → bráci, → zéki, → stríki}} ** in words whose stem ends in a single consonant: **: → dȅki, → kȕki, → kolégi, → pjȅgi, → zȃlihi}} ** in names and surnames **: ** in nouns ending in **: → kȍcki, → tȍčki, → prȁćki, → pljȕski, → pȁtki, → màzgi}} ** in some toponyms **: → Kartági}} ** in nouns ending in suffix -''ka'' with stem-final sonorant: **: → intelektùālki, → kàjkāvki, → srednjòškōlki}} Doublets are allowed in the following cases: * nominative plural of some masculine borrowings: *: * in nominative plural of surnames who are identical with some general masculine noun: *: * in nominative plural of masculine nouns with "fleeting a" and the ending *: → máčki : máčci, → òplećki : òplećci, omeđak → omećki : omećci}} * in dative and locative of some feminine foponyms with stem ending in a single consonant: *: * in dative and locative of some toponyms ending in : *: → Àljaski : Àljasci, Gràdiška → Gràdiški : Gràdišci}} * in dative and locative of some feminines ending in : *: → gȕski : gȕsci, → bȉtki : bȉ(t)ci, → trȃvci : trȃvki}} Iotation Assimilation There are two types of consonant assimilation: by voicing (jednačenje po zvučnosti) and by place of articulation (jednačenje po m(j)estu tvorbe). Assimilation of voice All consonants in clusters are neutralized by voicing, but Serbo-Croatian does not exhibit final-obstruent devoicing as most other Slavic languages do. Assimilation is practically always regressive, i.e. voicing of the group is determined by voicing of the last consonant. Sonorants are exempted from assimilation, so it affects only the following consonants: * *: → kobca : kopca}} (nominative → genitive, with fleeting a'') *: + džija → topdžija : }} * *: *: + džija → burekdžija : }} * *: + → podplatiti : }} *: * *: *: + -''bina'' → vračbina : }} * *: → težki : teški}} (singular → plural, with fleeting a'') *: * *: → uzki : uski}} (singular → plural, with fleeting a'') *: + → sbaciti : }} * *: *: + -''benik'' → učbenik : }} Furthermore, , and don't have voiced counterparts, so they trigger the assimilation, but are not affected by it. As can be seen from the examples above, assimilation is generally reflected in orthography. However, there are numerous orthographic exceptions, i.e. even if voicing or devoicing does take place in speech, the orthography does not record it, usually to maintain the etymology clearer. Assimilation by place of articulation Assimilation by place of articulation affects and in front of (post)alveolars , as well as palatals and , producing or : * *: + -''če'' → }} *: + -''je'' → listće : lisće : }} *: + -''nja'' → prosnja : }} *: + -''ljiv'' → snosljiv : }} * *: + -''džika'' → mirazdžika : }} *: + -''je'' → grozđe : }} *: + -''nja'' → paznja : }} *: + -''ljiv'' → pazljiv : }} Simultaneously, assimilation by voicing is triggered if necessary. L-vocalization A historical in coda position has become and is now so spelled, and produces an additional syllable. For example, the Serbo-Croatian name of Belgrade is Beograd. However, in Croatian, the process is partially reversed; compare Croatian stol, vol, sol vs. Serbian sto, vo, so (meaning "table", "ox" and "salt"). Sample The sample text is a reading of The North Wind and the Sun by a 57-year-old female announcer at the Croatian Television Network reading in a colloquial style. Phonemic transcription stôɡa ǒdlut͡ʃeː da‿ǒnome ôd‿ɲiːx prǐpadne pôbjeda kǒjiː sʋǔːt͡ʃeː t͡ʃôʋjeka pûːtnika ʋjêtar zǎpot͡ʃe snâːʒno pǔːxati a‿bǔduːt͡ɕi da‿je t͡ʃôʋjek t͡ʃʋr̩̂ːsto dr̩̂ʒao ôdjet͡ɕu nǎʋali ôːn jôʃ jât͡ʃeː t͡ʃôʋjek pâːk jôʃ jât͡ʃeː ot‿stûdeni prǐtisnuːt naʋǔːt͡ʃeː nǎ‿sebe jôʃ ʋîʃeː ôdjet͡ɕeː dôk‿se ʋjêtar ne‿ǔmoriː i‿prěpustiː‿ɡa tâda sûːnt͡su ǒnoː u‿pot͡ʃěːtku zǎsija ǔmjereno kâd‿je t͡ʃôʋjek skînuo suʋǐːʃak ôdjet͡ɕeː pǒʋiːsi ǒnoː jôʃ jât͡ʃeː ʒêɡu dôk‿se t͡ʃôʋjek u‿nemogǔːt͡ɕnosti da‿ǒdoli sǔnt͡ʃeʋoːj toplǐni ne‿sʋǔːt͡ʃeː i‿ně‿pod͡ʑeː na‿kǔːpaɲe u‿rijěːku tekǔt͡ɕit͡su prîːt͡ʃa pokǎzujeː da‿je‿t͡ʃêːsto uspjěʃnijeː uʋjerǎːʋaɲe něgoli nǎːsiːʎe/}} Phonetic transcription stôɡa ǒdɫut͡ʃeˑ da‿ǒnome ôd‿ɲiˑx prǐpadne pôbjeda kǒjiˑ sʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ t͡ʃôʋjeka pûːtnika ʋjêtar zǎpot͡ʃe snâːʒno pǔːxati a‿bǔduˑt͡ɕi da‿je t͡ʃôʋjek t͡ʃʋr̩̂ːsto dr̩̂ʒao ôdjet͡ɕu nǎʋali ôːn jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ t͡ʃôʋjek pâːk jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ ot‿stûdeni prǐtisnuˑt naʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ nǎ‿sebe jôʃ ʋîʃeˑ ôdjet͡ɕeˑ dôk‿se ʋjêtar ne‿ǔmoriˑ i‿prěpustiˑ‿ɡa tâda sûːnt͡su ǒnoˑ u‿pot͡ʃěːtku zǎsija ǔmjereno kâd‿je t͡ʃôʋjek skînuo suʋǐːʃak ôdjet͡ɕeˑ pǒʋiˑsi ǒnoˑ jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ ʒêɡu dôk‿se t͡ʃôʋjek u‿nemogǔːt͡ɕnosti da‿ǒdoli sǔnt͡ʃeʋoˑj topɫǐni ne‿sʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ i‿ně‿pod͡ʑeˑ na‿kǔːpaɲe u‿rijěːku tekǔt͡ɕit͡su prîːt͡ʃa pokǎzujeˑ da‿je‿t͡ʃêːsto uspjěʃnijeˑ uʋjerǎːʋaɲe něgoɫi nǎːsiˑʎe}} Orthographic version (Croatian) Sjeverni ledeni vjetar i Sunce su se prepirali o svojoj snazi. Stoga odluče da onome od njih pripadne pobjeda koji svuče čovjeka putnika. Vjetar započe snažno puhati, a budući da je čovjek čvrsto držao odjeću, navali on još jače. Čovjek pak, još jače od studeni pritisnut, navuče na sebe još više odjeće, dok se vjetar ne umori i prepusti ga tada Suncu. Ono u početku zasija umjereno. Kad je čovjek skinuo suvišak odjeće, povisi ono još jače žegu dok se čovjek, u nemogućnosti da odoli sunčevoj toplini, ne svu če i ne pođe na kupanje u rijeku tekućicu. Priča pokazuje da je često uspješnije uvjeravanje negoli nasilje. See also * Differences between Serbo-Croatian standard varieties * IPA for Serbo-Croatian * Language secessionism in Serbo-Croatian * Pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language * Serbo-Croatian grammar * Serbo-Croatian kinship * Serbo-Croatian language * Serbo-Croatian relative clauses * Shtokavian dialect * South Slavic dialect continuum * Standard language Notes References * * * * * * * * * book. Contents. Summary * * * * * External links * Croatian for travellers, with audio files Category:Bosnian language Category:Croatian language Category:Language phonologies Category:Montenegrin language Category:Serbian language Category:Serbo-Croatian language